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    Traitor's Purse
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    Traitor's Purse
    Unavailable
    Traitor's Purse
    Ebook284 pages4 hours

    Traitor's Purse

    By Margery Allingham

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “If I had to vote for the single best detective story, this would be it.” —A.S. Byatt
     
    Celebrated amateur detective Albert Campion awakes in hospital, accused of attacking a police officer and suffering from acute amnesia. All he can remember is that he was on a mission of vital importance to His Majesty’s government before his accident. On the run from the police and unable to recognize even his faithful servant or his beloved fiancée, Campion struggles desperately to put the pieces together—while World War II rages and the very fate of England is at stake.
     
    Published in 1941, Traitor’s Purse is “a wartime masterpiece” (The Guardian).
     
    “Uncommonly exciting stuff, replete with Allingham’s skill in story-building and the plausible characters that make her as much a fine novelist as a mystery writer.” —The New Republic
     
    “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light. And she has another quality, not usually associated with crime stories, elegance.” —Agatha Christie
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 1, 2015
    ISBN9781504048675
    Unavailable
    Traitor's Purse
    Author

    Margery Allingham

    Margery Louise Allingham is ranked among the most distinguished and beloved detective fiction writers of the Golden Age alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Allingham is J.K. Rowling's favourite Golden Age author and Agatha Christie said of Allingham that out of all the detective stories she remembers, Margery Allingham 'stands out like a shining light'. She was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a very literary family; her parents were both writers, and her aunt ran a magazine, so it was natural that Margery too would begin writing at an early age. She wrote steadily through her school days, first in Colchester and later as a boarder at the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, where she wrote, produced, and performed in a costume play. After her return to London in 1920 she enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she studied drama and speech training in a successful attempt to overcome a childhood stammer. There she met Phillip Youngman Carter, who would become her husband and collaborator, designing the jackets for many of her future books. The Allingham family retained a house on Mersea Island, a few miles from Layer Breton, and it was here that Margery found the material for her first novel, the adventure story Blackkerchief Dick (1923), which was published when she was just nineteen. She went on to pen multiple novels, some of which dealt with occult themes and some with mystery, as well as writing plays and stories – her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, was serialized in the Daily Express in 1927. Allingham died at the age of 62, and her final novel, A Cargo of Eagles, was finished by her husband at her request and published posthumously in 1968.

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    Reviews for Traitor's Purse

    4/5

    130 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Wonderful read, Albert Campion has woken in hospital with amnesia, all he knows is he has something of vital importance to do and it relates to the no. 15. This is a wonderful piece of writing, for 3/4 of the book Allingham takes us with Campion as he battles his ignorance of himself and in the process becomes oddly more self aware. The main plot device is strangely relevant to our current financial mess. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Traitor's PurseMargery AllinghamOctober 25, 2016I finished this novel in a day. Inspector Albert Campion awakens in a hospital ward after a head injury with a certain knowledge that he has only a short time to avert some disaster, but no clear idea of who he is, or what the disaster might be. He escapes, driving wildly, followed by his girlfriend. He is convinced he is wanted by the police, but allies himself with a constable, and breaks into a secret society in an English country town; he learned he should do this from the constable. His identity is doubted, and he escapes again, encounters his accomplices, and is finally back in the hands of police, where another head trauma restores some old memories. He finally thwarts a scheme to ruin the finances of England on the verge of the second world war. Very well plotted, intelligent dialog, but the plot turns on neurologically unrealistic features of head injury and amnesia, although the description of Campion's thought processes when he is in his amnesia is very well done.
    • 4/5
      My experience of this story was coloured a bit by reading the first half while sitting in a hospital waiting to be called for xrays, which was an interesting experience as the story opens with our hero in a hospital, suffering from acute amnesia and being accused of attacking a police officer. He escapes and the adventure starts. He doesn't know who to trust or who to distrust and people around him keep dying.It's an interesting read, full of snippets of World War II experiences and reminds me of Foyles War. I will have to read more of this series, I have a suspicion that it would be interesting. There were times when I wanted more details but overall it was an interesting read. I think some of my frustrations with the story are because it's a late book in the series.
    • 4/5
      Truthfully I didn't like this one as much as others have liked it but that's okay. Once I started reading it, I felt muddled in the head, but then again, in this installment our hero Albert Campion wakes up in a hospital with amnesia and is foggy, so I guess I was right there along with him.After waking with amnesia, he remembers that there's something vital he must do, but all he can think of is the number 15. With Amanda by his side, he tries to reconstruct what it is that depends on his intervention, but it seems hopeless.A good read, but really, imho, not as good as some of the ones preceding.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant, brilliant book. Set in the early 1940s Albert Campion is trying to foil a plot that will have a catastrophic effect on Britain. The only problem is he's lost his memory and can't remember a thing about it. The plot is slowly revealed as he works out who is friend and who is foe and what is going on, all the while trying to hide the fact that he can't remember anything.
    • 3/5
      While I think I've read an Albert Campion mystery before, it's been a long time, and I think that this was the wrong one for my re-introduction to this character. I found myself almost as clueless as the sleuth himself who had suffered a bump on his head about the other characters in the book--characters that I feel were not developed enough in this story for me to fully appreciate this story. Campion remembers only that he must stop something about "15" when he awakes in a hospital. I won't give away the rest of the plot, but I will suggest that others not make this the first Campion novel they read. I also feel that the plot of this particular novel is perhaps more dated than others of the time period. I know Allingham is a "classic," but even classic authors sometimes have a novel that doesn't hold its own over a long period of time.
    • 4/5
      ...And Allingham changes style again. Three years after her last Campion adventure, she's completely given up the ghost of the upper-class murder mystery that informed most of the 1930s; now, she's devoted herself completely to the World War II spy thriller. This isn't the light, Golden Age romp we got ten years earlier with Mystery Mile at all. This is serious business, made all the more urgent by starting in media res. Albert Campion wakes up in hospital with a head injury and amnesia, and from there on, the action never really lets up. Allingham uses that to her benefit, especially in the final third of the book, where there is so much exposition - and, frankly, Campion leaps to so many deductions - that you really have to be moving at speed to accept it. Is it entertaining? Well, yes, it's practically a Hitchcock film (think Suspicion or Secret Agent), and it's immensely readable. Does it make sense? Well, that's debatable. It doesn't feel much like anything that came before, and if it weren't for the cast of secondary characters - Oates, Amanda, and most especially a fun little entrance by Lugg - you might wonder if the book was originally written for Campion at all. Still, full credit to Allingham for trying something new. It will be interesting to see if she continues in this darker, more cynical vein from here on out, and whether or not Campion will regain any of his former personality.
    • 5/5
      a dastardly plot to destroy Britain revealed slowly and mysteriously as Albert Campion's befuddled mind gradually unfuddles itself, ending in a bang not a whimper.Now I have to read Tiger in the smoke again.
    • 5/5
      A really enjoyable thriller/mystery story. I read 15 of Allingham's Albert Campion novels in 1991/92, having read many of Sayer's Peter Wimsey novels and thinking that Campion was a good imitation, but imitation nevertheless. By the time I read this (11th in the series), I was clearly feeling jaded and only rated it average in memory.Rereading it 24 years later and I find it a fascinating idea, beautifully executed, so revise my rating of the story accordingly.The story starts with Albert Campion (although he does not remember his name) awaking in a hospital bed to find he has lost his memory, from a conversation he overhears from outside his ward he learns that he has killed a policeman, but he knows that he has an urgent mission - somehow connected to the number 15. Unfortunately, he cannot remember more than that. The story is of his escape to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of his urgent mission. We are in wartime Britain (WWII) and the mission must have something to do with the Nazis; what, is gradually revealed with great twists and turns (if a good number of coincidences).The story is also of Campion's discovery of his love for Amanda Fitton, who he was to marry, but of course he had forgotten that too. This part of the story is very well handled.Rereading this after so many years, I now want to go back and reread other stories in the series.The novel was first published in 1941 and whilst of its time in its preoccupations, is also social history for us now. It is also amazing that Allingham had time for writing this as well as the work she was doing with evacuees from London.I read the beautifully produced Folio Society edition with suitably atmospheric illustrations by James Boswell, capturing the the fractured view of reality from Campion's amnesia and drab colours of wartime Britain. The cover is especially successful in suggesting the amnesia from a blow to the head and the maze like nature of revelations.
    • 4/5
      I enjoy the Campion series. This is my favorite so far. Campion has amnesia. Narrative begins in his confusion. And stays pretty close to what he knows. Very clever. Set in early WW II.
    • 4/5
      In this one Campion has suffered a concussion and amnesia, and spends the first half of the book trying to remember who he is, and what disaster he must prevent, and what "number 15" means. It's deep in WWII, with spies and double agents suspected everywhere. The book is so deeply immersed in that particular time and place that it is somewhat difficult to follow the logic and the desperate stress and fear in the atmosphere. This one doesn't stand the test of time as well as the rest of the Campion series, but still an interesting suspense story.
    • 5/5
      A man wakes up in a hospital. He knows it's a hospital, but he can't remember how he got there, where the hospital is, or who he is. Then he overhears a nurse speaking with a policeman about someone who's going to be arrested for murder.The man escapes the hospital, only to be faced with trouble all along the way. The man is Albert Campion, and although he can't remember anything, he does find out that the police are counting on him to stop an enemy from ruining the country. And he only has 3 days to stop it.